Gauteng businessman Tuwani Matthews Mulaudzi has stood his ground to win a third round in his decade-long legal war after a full bench of three judges at the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) struck his trustees’ appeal off the roll for irregularly obtaining a court order.
The three judges struck the matter off the roll on Wednesday last week, leaving the status quo intact and the trustees — Oscar Jabulani Sithole, the late Christopher Peter van Zyl and Selby Musawonke Ntsibande — with only the Constitutional Court option left.
They have 15 days from Wednesday to approach the apex court.
It is the third time the trustees have lost.
They had petitioned the SCA President after losing three successive appeals and approached the apex court to challenge a Pretoria High Court ruling that barred them from convening a creditors’ meeting and from continuing to administer Mulaudzi’s estate pending a Special Investigating Unit probe into their own conduct.
The SCA refused to be drawn in.
Mulaudzi, who had laid a complaint with the SIU asking it to fold his case into its wider investigation into corrupt activities inside the Office of the Master of the High Court, suspects the trustees hid some of his assets.
His sequestration — which happened in 2016 — was due to be automatically lifted by effluxion of time on 2 December 2025, ten years by operation of law.
Days before that date, the trustees lodged the SCA appeal now at the centre of this ruling, in what Mulaudzi regards as a last throw of the dice to keep hold of the estate.
His lawyers and the trustees’ legal team ultimately reached a settlement that the appeal would be removed from the roll, and this was made an order of court.
Mulaudzi did not hold back.
“At some or one stage or the other, litigation does come to an end. These thugs, including the crooks at the Masters Office, who are busy authorising this litigation, the costs of which are paid for by tax payers, will soon reach a dead end, a cul de sac. Their stalingrad tactics will soon evaporate,” he said.
The ruling is the latest chapter in a legal war that started in 2014 and has already cost the Luvhomba Group founder everything.
The dispute had its roots in a R33-million investment policy Mulaudzi held with Fairbairn Capital, underwritten by Old Mutual.
In 2011, Old Mutual alleged, he ceded his rights in the policy to Nedbank. When the investment matured in 2014, now worth R48-million, Mulaudzi approached Old Mutual and claimed the full amount. Nedbank later claimed payment from Old Mutual, but Mulaudzi insisted he had not ceded the policy.
The matter was referred to the Asset Forfeiture Unit, which froze Mulaudzi’s assets. Months later, Old Mutual pushed ahead with a full criminal prosecution — even after the Western Cape High Court had already set aside an earlier asset-freezing order in September 2014 and ordered the AFU to pay Mulaudzi’s costs, an early judicial signal that the case against him was shaky.
The NPA proceeded regardless, laying 29 charges of fraud, theft, money laundering and racketeering that would take eight years to resolve.
Mulaudzi — an entrepreneur whose Luvhomba Group had interests spanning IT, mining, retail and consulting — lost his entire multi-million-rand asset base and more than R100-million in cash, all frozen under the Prevention of Organised Crime Act once the charges were laid.
Twenty-two retail stores were forced to shut down and their goods looted. A R130-million stake in a coal company, a R100-million investment in a mining company and a R116.5-million investment in an e-commerce venture collapsed. The group’s assets, valued at R3.2-billion, and his R4.9-million annual salary, were wiped out.
The case took a decisive turn when the Pretoria Commercial Crimes Court acquitted him on every charge, with the presiding magistrate finding the matter should never have been brought as a criminal case in the first place.
“Without the bogus charges, Mulaudzi would never have been sequestrated, and his companies would never have been liquidated,” a source close to the case said.
Vindicated, Mulaudzi set out to reclaim everything he had lost and has now lodged a R5-billion civil claim against the state — the Minister of Police, National Police Commissioner and the NPA — for unlawful, wrongful and malicious arrest, malicious prosecution and loss of earnings.
“The third defendants’ officials acted without reasonable and probable cause in that they prosecuted even though they foresaw that there were no prospects of securing a successful conviction,” Mulaudzi claims in his papers.
“The dispute was contractual to be dealt with in a civil court as opposed to criminal. They were in possession of an internal memo which recommended that the charges against the plaintiff were without merit and that the charges should be withdrawn as there were no prospects of a successful prosecution. Despite the aforesaid, the third defendant’s officials persisted with the criminal prosecution.”
It remains unclear whether the trustees will pursue any further legal avenues to retain their grip on Mulaudzi’s assets, having now failed three times.
